OPEN DATA
PROJECTS
2015
NETWORK
GOVLAB
Find collaborators
Create alliances
Learn from others
Move your public interest project
from idea to implementation
with online coaching
DATA
OPEN DATA 500
Learn about opening up
private data to maximize
public good
Find out how companies
around the world are using
open government data
OF INNOVATORS
COLLABORATIVES
OPEN GOV
RESEARCH
REPOSITORY
Find and contribute research
on open government and
civic technology
ACADEMY
GLOBAL NETWORK
OPEN DATA
IMPACT STUDIES
Find out how open data
is making a diﬀerence
around the world
smarterstate.org
govlabacademy.org
[email protected]
[email protected]
@thegovlab
@thegovlab #govlabacademy
thegovlab.org/dc
opendata500.com
[email protected]
[email protected]
@thegovlab #datacollab
@thegovlab #OD500
opengovresearch.org
thegovlab.org/opendata
[email protected]
[email protected]
@thegovlab
@thegovlab #ODIS
Network of Innovators: A GovLab Experiment
Find collaborators. Create alliances. Learn from others.
smarterstate.org
Network of Innovators (NoI) is a mobile application designed and developed by The
GovLab in collaboration with governance innovation leaders across seven countries.
The tool makes searchable the know-how of government innovators on topics
integral to governing more eﬀectively and legitimately, such as opening data, prizebacked challenges and crowdsourcing for public good. By answering questions
about governance innovation skills and experiences, the participant creates a proﬁle,
enabling her to be matched to those with complementary knowledge—either those
who are similar or diﬀerent—to enable mutual support and learning.
NoI adopts a more nuanced way of sharing and ﬁnding expertise – one that looks
beyond traditional credentials to focus on real world know-how. Instead of rigid
categories or open-ended tags, NoI attempts to get at what people know by asking
the kinds of questions they could answer. In response to those questions, they can
specify the expertise they have and want to share: whether they have the ability to
do something, to tell someone about it, or to refer them to others knowledgeable
about the topic. Although initially intra-governmental, the goal is to end up with a
knowledge network of individuals and organizations who have worked on innovative
projects—inside and outside of government.
NoI is an experiment intended to help the community learn if expert networking is an
eﬀective means to:
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Find who else has experience trying an innovation.
Identify who has worked on a particular type of policy or problem.
Find collaborators to develop new ideas for tackling a shared problem together.
Form alliances and networks of supporters.
Create a visual map of your own and other people’s expertise and the ability to
compare skills across countries.
Describe the job proﬁle of the 21st century public servant.
The ﬁrst public test of NoI will be at the International Open Data Conference, Ottawa,
Canada, May 28-29, 2015. For more about NoI, see http://smarterstate.org.
For more information, contact us at [email protected]
The GovLab Academy and Open Data
Move your public interest project from idea to implementation with online coaching
govlabacademy.org
Thanks to the generous support of Knight Foundation, The GovLab Academy – a
training program designed to promote civic engagement and innovation – has
launched a series of online project coaching programs.
The Coaching Programs are hands-on, project-driven mentoring programs designed
to help teams or individuals, both inside and outside of government, move public
interest projects from idea to implementation. Participants receive individualized
feedback, mentoring by topic experts, customized and original learning materials,
and peer-to-peer support within a community of people working on similar projects
and solving similar problems. Apply for upcoming programs, including:
• Open Data Projects: Designed for those (including SMEs) already undertaking
open data related projects. We provide coaching and mentoring designed to help
you implement your project or take it to scale.
• Data Collaboratives: Designed for private sector companies interested in sharing
data for public good, together we explore your datasets’ potential to promote
social good; understand diﬀerent governance models for sharing; and evaluate
risks and strategies to mitigate them to achieve the highest social impact
responsibly.
• Sensing Our Environment, Sensing Ourselves, Improving Our Lives: This course is
geared towards both government oﬃcials and policymakers exploring how
bottom-up sensor projects can achieve a core mission and technical experts
exploring how to get their project implemented.
For a full list of programs, see http://govlabacademy.org/coaching-programs.html.
For more information, contact us at [email protected]
The GovLab and Data Collaboratives
Learn about opening up private data to maximize public good
thegovlab.org/dc
“Data collaboratives” are when organizations from diﬀerent sectors — private
companies, research institutions, and government agencies — share data to help
solve public problems.
At The GovLab, we study the impact of data collaboratives. Our interest stems from
the premise that much of the data that would be valuable to improve people’s lives
resides with the private sector—in the form of, for instance, Web clicks, online
purchases, sensor data, and call data records—and could be made more accessible.
There is limited knowledge of how to maximize the beneﬁts of data sharing while
minimizing its associated risks, such as potential threats to privacy.
To accelerate the adoption of data collaboratives, The GovLab focuses on:
• Documenting value and measuring impact: The GovLab is co-creating case
studies of existing data collaboratives to highlight what works in these new
partnerships — their value propositions, technical arrangements, legal frameworks — and strategies for measuring impact.
• Matching public demand and corporate supply of data in a trusted way: Data
collaboratives require good governance to unlock the supply of private sector
data sets with potential public interest value. The GovLab and Peace Informatics
Lab (Leiden University), in collaboration with the World Economic Forum DataDriven Development initiative, have joined forces to create the Data Governance
Working Group to design new governance mechanisms.
• Building a practical toolkit: The GovLab and partners are developing the ﬁrst
iteration of a practical toolkit to help those wishing to create new data
collaboratives or accelerate those already in place.
• Training and convening data providers and users: On Friday, March 20, 2015, The
GovLab co-hosted the Accelerating Data Collaboratives Workshop with the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Oceanic & Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), and the White House Oﬃce of Science and Technology
Policy (OSTP). This workshop focused on best practices for sharing public and
private data for public good.
For more information, contact us at [email protected]
The Open Data 500 Global Network
Find out how companies around the world are using open government data
opendata500.com
Coordinated by The GovLab, the Open Data 500 Global Network is an international
network of organizations that seek to study the use and impact of open data. The
OD500 Global Network enables participating organizations to analyze open data in
their country in a manner that is both globally comparative and domestically speciﬁc.
The OD500 Global Network starts from the assumption that only by mapping the
use of Open Data within and across countries can new approaches for
understanding the economic and social impact of open government data be
generated.
In 2014, The GovLab launched Open Data 500 United States, supported by Knight
Foundation. The OD500 is the ﬁrst comprehensive study of U.S.-based companies
that use open government data as a key business resource. The study provides a
way to map and visualize the relationships between companies and open
government datasets, as well as to conduct other sector-by-sector analyses
New studies include:
Open Data 100 Mexico: opendata500.com/mx
Open Data 500 Australia: opendata500.com/au
Open Data 300 South Korea: opendata500.com/kr
Open Data 100 Italy: opendata500.com/it
Although the open data ecosystem varies from country to country, we adopt a
common approach and platform to enable the comparative study of the use of open
government data by businesses anywhere in the world. Participation in the Network
provides countries and organizations a way to collect, analyze, and display
information on the economic impact of open data in their regions; allows for crosscountry comparison; and invites them into a research and practice community
developing innovative tools and methodologies for understanding the economic
impact of open data.
To ﬁnd out more about how companies are using open government data, or how to
conduct a study in your country, please visit opendata500.com.
For more information, contact us at [email protected]
Open Gov Research Repository
Find and contribute research on open government and civic technology
opengovresearch.org
Advances in technology, together with new scientiﬁc insights on collaboration and
decision-making, provide a unique opportunity to redesign our democratic and civic
institutions and, indeed, the very notion of citizenship in our democracy.
Despite a ﬂourishing of civic innovation, civic technology, open governance and
open data – innovative uses of technology to enable citizens and institutions to
tackle society’s biggest problems together – we know too little about what kinds of
innovation work, when, why, and under what conditions. We also lack interaction and
coordination among those studying innovation in governance, across traditional
disciplinary boundaries, and between activists and academics.
The Open Gov Research Repository seeks to curate and help design research on
solving public problems diﬀerently. The Repository, developed by The GovLab, in
partnership with the World Bank Digital Engagement Evaluation Team (DEET),
MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance and mySociety,
provides institutional decision-makers, academics and practitioners with a diversity
of content related to meaningfully implementing and assessing the eﬀectiveness of
innovations in how we solve public problems.
The Repository comprises three central elements:
• Publication Repository – an extended collection of research publications
exploring new means of addressing public problems – from data analysis to
citizen engagement. • Research Methods Blog – a regularly updated blog (written by members of The
GovLab, DEET, Research Network and mySociety teams) focused on assessing
and developing new strategies for measuring the impact and eﬀectiveness of
open governance and civic technology initiatives. • Shared Knowledge Base – collaboration and knowledge-sharing between
practitioners and researchers in the ﬁeld including live, moderated Q&As and an
asynchronous forum for posing questions and sharing insights.
Researchers and practitioners working in open governance and civic technology are
eagerly encouraged to share their publications, blog posts, questions to the
community and more.
For more information, contact us at [email protected]
Open Data Impact Studies
Find out how open data is making a diﬀerence around the world
thegovlab.org/opendata The GovLab, in collaboration with the Omidyar Network, is pleased to announce
Open Data Impact Studies, a series of international case studies to be developed
Summer 2015. These impact studies are designed to help us better understand the
demand-use-impact cycle of open data.
Despite global commitments to and increasing enthusiasm for open data, little is
actually known about its use and impact. What kinds of social and economic
transformation has open data brought about and what is its future potential? How—
and under what circumstances—has it been most eﬀective? How have open data
practitioners mitigated risks (e.g, to privacy) and maximized social good?
Even as proponents extol the virtues of open data, the ﬁeld suﬀers from a mismatch
between the supply (or availability) of data and its actual demand (and subsequent
use). This mismatch potentially limits the impact of open data, and inhibits its ability
to produce social, economic, political, cultural and environmental change. Thus, a
more nuanced understanding of the various processes and factors underlying the
demand, supply, release, and use of open data is crucial.
In the run up to the project, we are compiling a list of candidate cases for further
study. We invite you to submit your suggestions at the email address below. Ideal
cases are those that are:
• Representative: encompassing a variety of geographies and diﬀerent use cases. In
particular, we are eager to source case studies from the nonproﬁt sector and from
the developing world.
• Illustrative and explanatory: seeking not only to describe what has happened but
also why and how it has happened. Therefore, it is important that there exists
suﬃcient information or documentation to enable in-depth research.
• Inspirational and replicable: oﬀering actionable guidance for other open data
projects around the world. Part of our goal in assembling these case studies is to
better understand what works and what does not, and under what conditions to
enable others to replicate.
We would love to hear your ideas and suggestions.
For more information, contact us at [email protected]